‘Don’t say another word to our lovely daughter! Beauty, go upstairs, darling,’ said Mum.
I ran upstairs to my bedroom. I put my hands over my ears so I couldn’t hear them arguing about me. I saw myself in my Venetian glass mirror. I tried brushing my hair. It stuck limply to my head. I looked at my big face and my fat tummy and my ridiculous clothes. Dad was right. I did look a sight.
No wonder Skye and Arabella and Emily and all the other girls called me Ugly. It wasn’t just a play on words because of my silly name. I really was ugly ugly ugly. It was like staring into one of those distorting mirrors at the fairground. My hair drooped, my face twisted like a gargoyle, and my body blew up like a balloon. My clothes shrank smaller so that my blouse barely buttoned and my skirt showed my knickers.
I seized my hairbrush and threw it at my image in the mirror. There was a terrible bang and I saw myself crack in two. I gaped in horror. I’d smashed the mirror, the ornate Venetian glass mirror Dad had bought specially for my bedroom. A long crack zig-zagged from the top to the bottom of the glass.
I shut my eyes tight, praying that it was all a mistake, an optical illusion because I was so upset. I opened my eyes a fraction, peering through my lashes. Everything was blurry – but I could still see the ugly crack right across the mirror.
I kicked the hairbrush across the room. Then I sagged onto the carpet, down on my knees. I clenched my fists. I was still holding Reginald Redted in my left hand. Why hadn’t I hurled him? He’d have bounced off the glass and somersaulted to the floor, no harm done. I held onto him. He looked back at me quizzically.
‘I am in such trouble,’ I whispered. ‘Dad always goes totally mad if I break anything, even if it’s a total accident. When he sees the mirror he’ll realize I threw the brush on purpose.’
I rocked backwards and forwards. I could hear the angry buzz of his voice downstairs. He was obviously still ranting about his ugly, freaky daughter.
‘I hate him,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t help being ugly. He’s my dad, he’s meant to like the way I look. He’s meant to be kind and funny and gentle, just like Rhona’s dad. Oh, I wish wish wish I could swap places with Rhona.’
Reginald Redted tilted his head at me. He seemed to be nodding. It looked like he longed to be back with Rhona instead of stuck with me.
Eight
Dad went off to golf again early the next morning. The minute he slammed the front door Mum jumped out of bed and pattered along the landing.
‘Beauty? Are you awake, sweetheart? Hey, can I come and have a cuddle with you this time?’
‘No, Mum! Don’t come in!’ I said.
‘What? Why not? What is it?’ said Mum, opening my bedroom door. ‘Are you still sleepy? Do you want to snuggle down by yourself?’
‘Yes. No. Oh, Mum!’ I wailed.
Mum came right into my room and switched on the light. I looked desperately at the mirror, wondering if it could have magically mended itself during the night. The crack looked uglier than ever.
Mum’s head jerked when she saw it, her hand going over her mouth.
‘Oh, lordy! A broken mirror, seven years’ bad luck! However did it happen?’
‘Don’t be cross, Mum!’ I begged.
‘Don’t be nuts, when am I ever cross with you?’ said Mum, coming over to my bed. She put her arms round me and hugged me tight. ‘What did you do? Did you knock against it somehow? Don’t worry, I know it was an accident.’
‘No it wasn’t, Mum. I did it deliberately,’ I said, in a very small voice.
‘Deliberately?’ Mum echoed, astonished.
‘I threw my hairbrush at it – at me, my reflection,’ I said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mum, and she started crying.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’ll pay for it out of my pocket money,’ I said. ‘Please don’t cry.’
‘I’m crying because your dad was such a pig to you, making you so unhappy. He was talking stupid rubbish, sweetheart. You look lovely. When your hair’s natural it’s all soft and shiny, you’ve got beautiful eyes, rosy cheeks, gorgeous smooth skin. Don’t you dare let him put you down, baby.’
‘He puts you down.’
‘Yes, I know. Well, I’m going to try and stand up to him more. I know he’s dead worried about his work but that doesn’t mean he can just be hateful and take it out on us,’ said Mum. She looked at the mirror, running her finger down the long crack.
‘Could we mend it somehow?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Mum.
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘Simple. We’ll buy another one and we’ll sneak this broken one out to the dump.’
‘But they cost hundreds of pounds, Mum, you know they do. I’ve got seven pounds left out of my pocket money after buying Rhona’s birthday present.’
‘I’ll buy the new mirror, silly.’
‘But you haven’t got any money, Mum.’
Dad didn’t want Mum to go out to work now, not even at Happy Homes. He said her job was to make our home a happy one. He didn’t give her an allowance out of his money. She had to ask for everything. Dad didn’t even let her have her own credit card.
Mum was nibbling at one of her nails, thinking about it.
‘I’ll sell some stuff,’ she said. ‘Some of my rings, or maybe a necklace.’
‘But that’s not fair on you, Mum. It was me that broke the mirror. Shall I sell some of my jewellery?’
I had a gold chain with a tiny real diamond and a silver bangle and some turquoise beads and a small gold signet ring with my initial on.
‘I don’t think your jewellery would fetch much, Beauty. I’ve got masses of stuff. I’ve sold one or two bits to that jeweller’s near the market before when I’ve needed to.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ I knew she spent the money on me. Every so often Mum took me up to London on Saturdays to go to art galleries. We never told Dad. He hated art: he said all Old Master paintings were boring religious stuff and all modern art utter rubbish and a con. I’m not sure Mum really liked going round all the galleries either. She often yawned and rubbed her back, but she still tottered around gamely in her high heels. She bought me postcards of all my favourite paintings and I pasted them into scrapbooks so that I had my own mini-gallery to look at whenever I liked.
‘If I get to be an artist when I’m grown up I’m going to treat you to so many different lovely things, Mum,’ I said.
‘I think artists are supposed to starve in garrets,’ said Mum. ‘Maybe we’ll both be living on dry biscuits and water. Ah, that reminds me! Do you fancy doing some baking this morning?’
‘Baking?’ I stared at Mum.
‘Yeah, why not?’ she said. ‘I thought I’d have a go at making cookies. Then you could maybe take them to school, to share them round?’
I suddenly saw where she was coming from. ‘So they’ll start calling me Cookie?’
‘We could try it, eh?’
‘Oh, Mum, you are sweet. But . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Do you know how to bake cookies?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Mum. ‘Well. It can’t be that difficult. Remember that time we made cakes together?’
I remembered. They weren’t proper cakes, they were just made from a cake-mix packet, and even so we got them wrong, adding too many eggs because we thought it would make them taste nicer. We put them right at the top of the oven, hoping that would make them go golden. They didn’t do this at all, they burned themselves black, though the insides were all sloppy and scrambled. We still iced them and I ate them all up, insisting they were delicious. Maybe this had been a mistake.
‘Have you got a cookie packet mix, Mum?’
‘I’m not sure they do them. We’ll just have to make it all up from scratch,’ said Mum.
We had breakfast first, spooning down our cornflakes. Then we rolled up our sleeves and got cracking on the cookies. Mum found an old bag of flour at the back of the cupboard. It had been there since I used flour-and-water paste when I was at nursery s
chool. Mum cracked in an egg and stirred in some milk. Then she kneaded and I kneaded. We both got our great lumps of cookie dough and thumped them around on the table until they were lovely smooth balls.
‘Hey, they look good!’ I said. ‘How shall we roll them out?’
We didn’t have a rolling pin so Mum improvised with a bottle of wine. We didn’t have any cookie cutters either but Mum twisted the lid off a jar of jam and started cutting out rounds in her flattened dough.
‘I’m going to make mine into people,’ I said, starting to mould my dough.
‘What, like a gingerbread man?’ said Mum.
‘Sort of.’ I made a dough woman, carefully cutting a skirt for her, then putting little dough high heels on her pale legs. I broke off pieces of dough and rolled them long, and then with my fingers I twirled them round and round, creating long curls. I stuck them on the dough woman’s head. I found a safety pin and fashioned features on her dough face: two big eyes, a little nose, a cupid’s-bow mouth smiling at me. I smiled back as I laid her carefully on a baking tray.
I started on another dough person, small and square. I made a dough dress for her and gave her a fancy hairdo. Her eyes went squinty when I scratched them into place, her nose went blobby and her mouth turned down. I stared at her, sighing. Then I pulled all her dough ringlets right out and gave her a radical haircut, chopping it tomboy short. It didn’t look so bad now. I peeled off her party dress and made her dough dungarees. She looked much better. I rubbed at her mouth and she started smiling.
Mum peered over at the finished figure on the baking tray.
‘Oh, Beauty, that’s so good! Is that me?’ She came and stood beside me. ‘And who’s this? Is it a boy? No, it’s you with short hair! You look so cute.’
‘I wish I did have short hair,’ I said. ‘Do you think Dad would mind terribly if I had it all cut off?’
Mum rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said.
I put my dough girl beside her mum. Then I got started on a dough man.
‘Is that Dad?’ said Mum.
I didn’t answer. I made the body and then rolled the arms and the legs. I made pin marks on the dough shirt to show it was checked and gave his long legs comfy jeans. I spent ages carving his face with my pin to give it the right gentle expression. Of course it wasn’t Dad.
I started on a new smaller person, very fat, with four little legs. I fashioned long loppy ears. Then I carefully picked her up and laid her on my man’s checked chest. He wrapped his doughy arms around her, holding her close.
My tray was full now. I patted my special pastry people, feeling bad as I put them into the hot oven.
‘I hope it doesn’t hurt,’ I whispered foolishly. ‘I’ll try hard not to let you burn.’
Mum put her tray of plain round cookies above mine and we shut them in the oven.
‘Tra la!’ said Mum. ‘Welcome to the world, Cookie Girl.’
‘Well, hi there, Cookie Mum,’ I said.
Mum switched on the radio and we started dancing to the pop music in our pyjamas. We didn’t disco dance like Skye; this was happy mad dancing, leaping around the room, beating a tattoo on the table top, tapping out tunes with the spoons. We sank into our seats exhausted when the music stopped.
‘I can smell the cookies!’ I said, my nose twitching like Lily’s. ‘Do you think they’re ready yet?’
‘We’ve only just put them in the oven, sweetheart. They’ll be ages yet. Come on, let’s go and get washed and dressed while we’re waiting.’
I washed and dressed in double quick time, not quite trusting Mum’s judgement. I decided to have a little peep in the oven. I just opened the door a tiny crack so as not to let the heat out. I stared. Then I opened it wide, peering at the two trays.
‘Mum!’ I shouted. ‘Oh, Mum, something really awful’s happened!’
Mum came rushing into the kitchen in her underwear.
‘Have you burned yourself? Have you broken something? What is it, Beauty?’
‘Look at the cookies!’ I wailed.
Mum’s neat cookies had expanded in every direction, joining up so that her baking tray contained one long flat misshapen biscuit. My lovely cookie people had expanded too. They were now great grotesque caricatures. Sam was this bloated blobby man, all head and huge stomach, and lovely Lily had blown up into a beach ball. Little Mum was a great giant. Even her careful curls were ruined. Now she looked as if she had snakes writhing right out of her head.
I was the worst, so squat I was completely square, my dungarees inflated into vast overalls, my short haircut making me look like a man. Not any old man. I looked the spitting image of my dad.
I put on an oven glove and pulled the baking tray out of the oven. I picked up the me-cookie even though it was red hot and snapped off its stupid head.
‘Hey hey, stop it, Beauty! Don’t burn yourself. And stop spoiling them. They might look a bit weird but I bet they taste yummy,’ said Mum.
We waited until they’d cooled down a little and then nibbled. They didn’t taste good at all. They were as flat and hard and boring as cardboard.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mum. She took the oven glove and pulverized her own cookie. ‘They’re horrible, aren’t they?’
‘Yep.’
‘Your dad’s right. I can’t cook for toffee,’ said Mum, drooping.
‘Yes, you can,’ I said. I hesitated. ‘Well, maybe you could learn.’
‘I’m useless at learning stuff. I was always bottom of the class at school,’ said Mum. ‘Thick as a brick, that’s me.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re . . . pretty and witty,’ I said.
‘OK, OK, so you’re . . . cute and astute,’ said Mum.
‘Maybe we need a proper recipe book?’ I said, scraping the cookie crumbs into the wastebin. ‘I think we need to get all the ingredients right. Maybe this is the wrong sort of flour? And perhaps we’ve left out something important? What would make the cookies softer and sweeter?’
‘Butter and sugar!’ said Mum. ‘OK, I’ll look for a recipe book tomorrow. Number two on my shopping list. Number one will be the new Venetian glass mirror.’
I quivered.
‘Sorry! Forget about it now. Shall we go and watch some telly? Don’t they have a Sam and Lily omnibus edition on a Sunday morning?’
Mum and I curled up at either end of the sofa. We tucked our feet up cosily. We were never allowed to do that when Dad was around because he said it marked the sofa cushions. Mum flipped through the Sunday papers while I spun round and round into Sam and Lily world in the Rabbit Hutch. I’d seen all five programmes during the week and so I could whisper all the right words. At the end of all the repeats there was a special five minutes of Sam and Lily on Sunday.
‘Hey there!’ said Sam.
He was holding Lily. She twitched her nose at me, but she was more interested in something down on the ground. She struggled a little in Sam’s arms, not quite sure of herself.
‘Hey, Lily, it’s OK. It’s only a little black cat come to say hello. Let me introduce you.’
Sam bent down so that Lily’s face was on a level with the cat’s. They regarded each other warily.
‘Lily, meet Lucky. Lucky, meet Lily.’ Sam looked out of the television set at me. ‘And here’s my very special friend, Beauty. Say meow to her, Lucky.’
Lucky obediently gave a tiny mew, lifting and licking one small paw.
‘Oh, Lucky, you’re so sweet,’ I whispered.
Lily stared at me reproachfully.
‘Not quite as sweet as Lily, of course,’ I said.
‘Lucky’s come to live in the house next door. She’s just popped in to meet her new neighbour,’ said Sam. ‘Are you going to come and say hello on a daily basis, Lucky?’
Lucky gave a demure nod.
‘Well, that’s just fine and dandy, because that means you’ll cross our path and if a little black cat does that then we’ll have a lucky day.’
‘I wish you lived next door to
me, Lucky,’ I whispered. ‘I need all the luck in the world to counteract seven whole years’ bad luck.’
‘Seven years?’ said Sam. ‘That’s all the way until you’re practically grown up! Whatever have you done to inflict such a curse upon yourself?’
‘I broke my mirror,’ I confessed.
‘Oh, Beauty, is that all!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t really get seven years’ bad luck. That’s just an old wives’ tale.’
I glanced at Mum, who was deep in a fashion article.
‘OK, a young wives’ tale,’ said Sam. ‘But it’s just silly superstition. I think we make our own luck, Beauty.’
‘Well, I’m not very good at it,’ I said, sighing. ‘I wish I could come and live in the Rabbit Hutch with you and Lily, Sam.’
‘We’d love that too,’ said Sam.
‘Do you think we’ll ever meet?’
Sam looked straight into my eyes. ‘Yes, we’ll meet.’
‘Really? Actually face to face?’
‘Absolutely. Face to face. Or ear to ear in Lily’s case.’
Lily made a little snorty noise as if she was laughing. Then Sam reminded everyone that he’d love to see a drawing or a painting of their pet, and said goodbye.
‘Bye, Sam, bye, Lily,’ I said out loud.
‘Bye, Sam and Lily,’ Mum said, turning her page.
The television voice said, ‘Who have we just seen?’
‘Sam and Lily in the Rabbit Hutch!’ Mum and I said simultaneously.
I stood up. ‘I think I’ll go and do some drawing, Mum,’ I said.
I sat cross-legged on my bed upstairs with my drawing pad and coloured pencils. I propped Reginald Redted up beside me, telling him I wanted to draw his portrait.
‘You can be my pet and then I can send your picture off to Sam in the Rabbit Hutch,’ I said.
Reginald Redted looked down his snout at me. He seemed offended at the idea that he was my pet. He wouldn’t pose properly, falling forwards, flipping backwards, even tumbling head over heels over the edge of the bed onto the carpet.
‘OK, don’t co-operate then. I won’t draw you. I’ll draw Nicholas Navybear instead,’ I said.
I divided my page into four squares. I drew myself looking at Nicholas on the tray at Rhona’s party. I was smiling from ear to ear as I saw his little furry face. Then in the second square I drew my hands gently cradling Nicholas. He lounged against my fingers, using my thumbs as a footrest. He was smiling from ear to ear too.